A Fox Station TV license is being challenged over "Redskins"

[corco]

To be honest, I had never even heard of the term "redskin" until this debate flared up.  Am I just sheltered?

I think part of the problem is that it's only a limited amount of the country where blatant racism against American Indians is still happening on a large scale, and it's nowhere near Washington DC. The states where you are likely to hear redskin or prairie n***** or other epithets are: South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, North Dakota, maybe Colorado and Utah, and not in the populated areas of those states (Gallup, Rapid City, Casper, and to a lesser extent Billings and Bismarck would be the exceptions).

Where I've personally heard people call American Indians derogatory names the most is on the edge of reservations where ranchers and natives are fighting over water rights, and the perception of white people is that American Indians are drunk, government subsidized nogoodniks using outdated treaties and land claims to make it harder for them to get their fields irrigated.  When I was going to school in Wyoming I had a classmate that grew up on a ranch outside Riverton WY, and whenever you brought up Indians you could watch his blood boil and the profanity would start coming out.

And that's really something that only a very small part of the white population of this country will ever see or need to worry about, but it's a pretty good percentage of the American Indian population. That also makes it harder to sell "Redskin" as a name that urgently needs to be changed, since the vast majority of the country and certainly the vast majority of Redskins fans aren't really interacting with non-assimilated native populations for anything other than the occasional trip to the casino. They say "it's not offensive" because they've never used it in an offensive way and they've never heard anybody use it in an offensive way, but they're also not traveling to and spending time in northwestern New Mexico very often.

I truly don't believe most Redskins fans intend to be racist, and I get why a lot of them have no clue as to why it's a racist name, and I get why they don't want to change. They just, and justifiably so, aren't paying enough attention to what's going on in the middle of nowhere to realize why that's probably not a good thing to name a team after. I can't blame people for not paying attention to the interaction between ranchers and natives on the edges of reservations in low populated areas most of the way across the country- there's just no reason for people to, but that doesn't change that it's happening. There's hardly any black people up here in Helena, and there isn't much racism against blacks, but that doesn't mean I'd be able to get away with having a team named the Helena Negroes.

[bandit957]

So what's the argument for not changing this racist team name again?  What changes if Washington becomes, I dunno, the Sentinels (the team name in the movie "The Replacements")?  Is anyone going to stop watching football?  Stop going to games?

What's particularly offensive is that a lot of the folks who keep defending the team name because of "tradition" don't seem to mind one bit whenever a corporation buys naming "rights" to a stadium.

The FCC and all the major sports leagues actually need to crack down on corporate naming "rights".

[Brandon]

Given the city is in the District of Colombia, how about "Colombians" for a lame name.


with a hispanic person snorting some drugs as the logo. Or not.

Actually, that'd just be former Mayor Marion Barry snorting them.

[The Nature Boy]

Why not pay homage to the baseball team and call them the "Washington Senators?"

[Brandon]

Why not pay homage to the baseball team and call them the "Washington Senators?"

'Cause thre they'd leave for Minnesota or Texas. 

[algorerhythms]

So what's the argument for not changing this racist team name again?  What changes if Washington becomes, I dunno, the Sentinels (the team name in the movie "The Replacements")?  Is anyone going to stop watching football?  Stop going to games?

What's particularly offensive is that a lot of the folks who keep defending the team name because of "tradition" don't seem to mind one bit whenever a corporation buys naming "rights" to a stadium.

The FCC and all the major sports leagues actually need to crack down on corporate naming "rights".

Why would the sports leagues crack down on something that makes them money. And the FCC wouldn't do it because if it doesn't involve communications it's not their business.

[bugo]

To be honest, I had never even heard of the term "redskin" until this debate flared up.  Am I just sheltered?

No. I live in Oklahoma and I've never heard the term to refer to anything except for the football team.

[oscar]

My thought is that the name-change is inevitable. Snyder will continue taking as much press out of it as possible (bad press is good press) and eventually will change the name, prompting the sale of merchandise. He's just milking the cow dry first.

Or better still (for him, it'd suck for the rest of us), give up the team name in return for a new publicly-subsidized stadium.  That scenario has gotten some press around here. 

[Pete from Boston]

My thought is that the name-change is inevitable. Snyder will continue taking as much press out of it as possible (bad press is good press) and eventually will change the name, prompting the sale of merchandise. He's just milking the cow dry first.

Or better still (for him, it'd suck for the rest of us), give up the team name in return for a new publicly-subsidized stadium.  That scenario has gotten some press around here.

Or give 25% of the net to Indians.  Hell, make it 50%.

[hbelkins]

Or better still (for him, it'd suck for the rest of us), give up the team name in return for a new publicly-subsidized stadium.  That scenario has gotten some press around here.

Isn't the current stadium fairly new?

Gotta love it when a perfectly good arena (Freedom Hall in Louisville) is replaced by an overpriced monstrosity (the KFC Yum Center).

Or when a perfectly good stadium (Riverfront in Cincinnati) is replaced by TWO stadiums. What a waste of money.

[Pete from Boston]

Isn't the current stadium fairly new?

17 years old, the same as the antiquated facility the Atlanta Braves are leaving, and two years newer than the stadium the Rams will probably leave St. Louis to get a replacement for.

You didn't know you owe your local sports team a new facility every twenty years?  Because you do. 

[bugo]

Or when a perfectly good stadium (Riverfront in Cincinnati) is replaced by TWO stadiums. What a waste of money.

Riverfront was a compromise stadium, neither good for baseball nor football.

[JMoses24]

Or when a perfectly good stadium (Riverfront in Cincinnati) is replaced by TWO stadiums. What a waste of money.

Riverfront was a compromise stadium, neither good for baseball nor football.

Actually, it would have been fine as a baseball-only stadium. In fact, when the Bengals moved out in 1999, I think the Reds could've been fine there. But Great American Ball Park turned out pretty nice! I see at least one, and usually a couple, games a year there.

[Scott5114]

I think it's important to remember that "Indians" is not a homogenous group. It's like categorizing people as "Asians". There are a lot of subgroups of that overly broad label, they do not all feel the same way about every issue, and a lot of them don't like the other groups.

I know the Chickasaws pretty well–I live with one!–but their point of view on things is pretty different from the Sioux and the Navajo and other tribes. The Oklahoma tribes' circumstances are worlds apart from the other tribes. And it's even different from tribe to tribe–Jeremy alludes to the Indian hospital in Claremore upthread, but the Chickasaws have used casino income to build a state-of-the-art medical facility in Ada that blows the regional hospital in Norman out of the water at least in terms of how nice the facilities are (it seems like the quality of care in Norman is probably better but I am not well-versed enough in medicine nor have I used the hospital in Norman enough to be able to comprehend if that surface observation is correct). The Chickasaws, therefore, are probably going to view healthcare differently from the Cherokees, and those are two tribes in the same state.

[SSOWorld]

Washington Humans.


-- there. Settled. 

[GaryV]

Washington Humans.

Football players are human?   

[Brandon]

Washington Humans.

Football players are human?   

There are humans in Washington, DC?
I thought they were all our robot overlords.

[Pete from Boston]

Washington Humans.

Football players are human?   

Now you've offended humans.

[leroys73]

Riverfront was a compromise stadium, neither good for baseball nor football.
[/quote]

Actually, it would have been fine as a baseball-only stadium. In fact, when the Bengals moved out in 1999, I think the Reds could've been fine there. But Great American Ball Park turned out pretty nice! I see at least one, and usually a couple, games a year there.
[/quote]

I never saw a FB game at River Front but I was there with some high dollar season tickets the first game the Reds played there.  The view sucked.  So I would strongly disagree that the stadium would have made a good baseball park. 

By the way doesn't the name Reds offend our Marxist leaders or are they proud to be associated with a capitalistic operation?

[Big John]

By the way doesn't the name Reds offend our Marxist leaders or are they proud to be associated with a capitalistic operation?

They changed their name to the Redlegs during the red scare of the 1950s, then restored the Reds name in the 60s.

[jeffandnicole]

Most multi-purpose stadiums aren't good for either, but they're good enough.  Philly had Veterans Stadium.  It was a dump, but we were proud of the dump.  Especially the 700 level.  Might've been one of the best implosions also of a stadium: Instead of a 5 second "bring it down at once", it took about a minute to slowly go all around the stadium.  Very cool to watch.

[leroys73]

By the way doesn't the name Reds offend our Marxist leaders or are they proud to be associated with a capitalistic operation?

They changed their name to the Redlegs during the red scare of the 1950s, then restored the Reds name in the 60s.

I am well aware of the name change in the 50s, I was there at Crosley Field.  Saw many games there, season tickets.  Yes, it is Reds now, so that is my point, offending OUR Marxist leaders.

[SSOWorld]

Locking thread since the thread is becoming too political